A classic Sarah Silverman bit goes like this: "I was raped by a doctor ... which is so bittersweet for a Jewish girl."

Another one goes thus: "I used to go out with a guy who was half-black who totally broke up with me because I'm a fucking loser ... I just heard myself say that. I'm such a pessimist. He's half- white."

Or try this on for size: "I love how Palestinians and Jews hate each other. It's so cute. Honestly, what's the difference? They're brown. They have an odour. It's like sweet potatoes hating yams."

Silverman never met a taboo she didn't like. Even her appearance breaks a taboo: a female comic isn't supposed to be pretty. And she's really pretty: tall, with long black hair, creamy skin, Audrey Hepburn eyebrows, perfect, lickable white teeth. "Coltish" is a description that comes up a lot with besotted male reviewers, who swoon at her combination of potty mouth and sweet, girlish delivery.

And while her breathtaking gallops through socio-political hypocrisy have thrilled fans of her regular New York and Los Angeles club gigs, and the big screen version of her stage show, Jesus Is Magic, Silverman's claim to being a comedy thoroughbred has now been assured with the success of her biggest project to date: The Sarah Silverman Program.

When the show first appeared last February on US cable network Comedy Central - normally home to blokey belly laughs - it became the highest-rated debut in three years. And why not - Silverman is natural-born nerd-bait to the comedy-geek boys, beating them (off) at their own game.The SSP is a refinement of her narcissistic bonehead persona, in the Curb Your Enthusiasm tradition of the star playing a monstrously exaggerated version of themselves. In her show, Silverman's monster cruelly dumps God after a one-night stand; abruptly adopts a little girl when she realises she's too old to enter a kid's pageant herself; glues dollar bills over a TV screen to avoid having to watch a programme on children dying of leukemia - all the while maintaining an iron clad insensitivity to the well-meaning humans around her.

There are resonances with the amorally self-involved character of Julia Davis in Nighty Night, but unlike the evil Jill Tyrrell, Silverman's "Sarah" is less a dark manipulator and more of a giant four-year-old: all ego and no impulse control. And Silverman adds hilariously daffy songs to the mix, proving handy on the acoustic guitar and pleasing on the pipes. The Poop Song, for one, is an internet hit.

Viewers whose only previous exposure to her came from small but spiky roles in The Larry Sanders Show and School Of Rock, recently got a snootful of her in full sunshine'n'arsenic Miss Priss mode at June's MTV Movie Awards and the recent Video Music Awards. At the Movie Awards, she commented on Paris Hilton's upcoming jail stint with earnest concern that Paris might break her teeth in a cell-bar-fellating mishap. And at the VMAs, Silverman even managed to reactivate long lost sympathy for pop culture punch-bag Britney Spears with this supreme bitchiness:

"Have you seen Britney's kids?" she joked. "Oh my God, they are the most adorable mistakes you will ever see! They are as cute as the hairless vagina they came out of." Air was sucked through pursed lips worldwide on that one. Clearly, with her big old mouth and brand new show, the woman had some explaining to do. I met Silverman at Hollywood munch nook Hugo's, where she bounced in with her "signature" look: jeans, T-shirt and gym-class ponytail. Cheerful and unguarded, she followed my lead on the mac'n'cheese and we talked through half-chewed food about Britney, bedwetting, and the difficulties of being a fake bigot.

Sarah Silverman: "I wish I didn't do the VMAs. I totally regret it."

Katie Puckrik: Why?

SS: "Well, I liked the jokes I did, but all anyone focused on was that it was mean. But they put me on immediately after Britney, so I had to do jokes. Everyone else laughed, but Britney wasn't ready to laugh at herself."

Britney wasn't even ready to perform...

SS: "Every time she's been on the VMAs, it's been a spectacle - something amazing. I heard she was gonna have this magician, there'd be fire and smoke, and I would be the little comedian making fun of the big star. I caught a glimpse of her at rehearsal and she was walking through it, and then at the actual performance, she did that same thing! And then I come out and I'm an asshole."

Did you regret your comments about Paris Hilton as well?

SS: " Well, no. I think she didn't feel bad because of what I said, she felt bad because when I said the set-up that she was going to jail, the whole audience cheered for a solid minute. And my heart sank at that point ... I had to keep going with the joke, I was in the middle of a set-up but I was like, wow, she's sitting right there and there's grown men in her face with a camera."

You've attracted controversy with your material addressing racism. Do you ever get fans who don't understand the irony?

SS: "Oh my God. Horrifying. My old boyfriend used to call it 'mouthful of blood laughs', people who feel a kinship with me and couldn't be farther off. I won't name names, but a famous singer in a band from the 1980s came to my show last year. I was so excited to meet him because I was a big fan, and he was with some friends, and he comes over and he's like, 'You are my favorite comedian. I saw your movie Jesus Is Magic, I love it' and I'm like 'Oh my gosh, thank you!' and he goes, 'You have the best nigger jokes!' and he turns to his friends and yells it again ... And I'm like, 'Well I ... don't think of it as...' and he kept going on. Yuck. It's a bummer.

The Poop Song seems to be a popular song for little girls to do on YouTube.

SS: "I know! I saw that! I love to see 13-year-old girls recording themselves singing The Poop Song. That's just a whole other layer of satisfaction."

You must be so proud. What draws you to taboo subjects?

SS: "Not a conscious choice. When I was three, my dad taught me all these swears, y'know: bitch, bastard, damn, shit, and I would yell it at the supermarket, and he'd die laughing. And I got strong reactions, one way or another, from swearing at three. I think you get addicted to that attention."

You suffered from depression...

SS: "When I was 13 to 16, I was so depressed - panic attacks. I went to a psychiatrist who said, 'Any time you feel bad, take one of these'. It was Xanax. So I go to the next appointment, my mom drops me off; it's in a Victorian house in New Hampshire. The psychiatrist was on one floor, and upstairs was a hypnotist who I also went to on Wednesdays for bedwetting."

It's like Running With Scissors.

SS: "It was winter, pitch black out, snow. I'm waiting and waiting for the psychiatrist, and the hypnotist comes down the stairs - this is his bedside manner with a 13-year-old girl - crying and goes, 'Dr (x) hung himself!' He killed himself! So I just had to wait for the rest of the hour until my mom picked me up! Then I went to another therapist who prescribed me 16 Xanax a day, I'm not kidding! And I was only 13."

Party hardy!

SS: "I didn't feel better. I didn't feel anything! I finally went to this Mexican psychiatrist who could not believe the medication I was on. He said, 'You can't just go off this cold turkey, you could die.' So he had me take a half a pill less a week, and it took months and I remember taking that last pill, and I was myself again."

What about bedwetting? That's not an everyday problem.

SS: "Oh my God. Until I was, like, 16. My dad was a bedwetter; I think his dad was a bedwetter. I like to talk about it because it's something that I thought would be my deepest, darkest secret my whole life, and then you become an adult, and it's not."

When was the last time you were in the UK?

SS: "I did the Secret Policeman's Ball and that was cool, meeting the comedy world of England."

Were you familiar with any of them?

SS: "No. I'd never seen that Brand guy [Russell], the punky, rock'n'rolly-lookin' guy. I didn't expect much, considering he has a real look and stuff but he was good. But I didn't... uh [mumbly grunts and squirms] they were all right. But French and Saunders I'm completely down with. I met Dawn French - she actually came to my apartment 'cos she did a project interviewing women in comedy and I completely fell in love with her. We exchanged phone numbers, but I don't know if hers is real. I think I was more enthusiastic about it than she was."

How's success treating you?

SS: "Well I love it because this show is so much work, but it's a dream come true. These shows are not compromised at all. And that's so exciting. I always wanted to break into movies, but now I'm like, 'Why would I want to be Kate Hudson's best friend?' Some shitty exposition best friend role in a movie, when I can do this ?"